From the media on governance mistakes [Content Warning: discussion on suffering and self harm, links to articles on brutality and violence]

Some media articles have brought the topic of mistakes in governance to mind: 

“Alan Kohler: The RBA’s inflation target has been a pointless disaster”   https://thenewdaily.com.au/opinion/2023/09/11/rba-inflation-target-kohler/   

This is an area that conservatives love to harp on about: the economy, and the topic that can do massive harm to many people - including the rich. 

Examples of the harm that inflation can do can be found by a search for hyperinflation (e.g., https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=hyperinflation&atb=v192-1&ia=web), and I personally saw the harm that inflation and high interest rates did in the 70s and 80s. 

However, what has been blindingly obvious to everyone who isn’t rich is that using people as a counterbalance to inflation - i.e., increasing unemployment to decrease inflation - also does MASSIVE harm. 

Even academics have caught up with this, with the recent paper (see https://theconversation.com/new-findings-show-a-direct-causal-relationship-between-unemployment-and-suicide-209486) on a link between unemployment and suicide.

However, the continued refusal of economists to account for the quantifiable harm to mental health of unemployment enforcement systems, and the possibly unquantifiable but nevertheless very real and evident harm to the hearts and souls of those who advocate for and implement such invasive and punitive systems, shows how detached from reality some experts are. 

(The amathiac suggestion of one such “expert” that the way for workers to increase their wages/salaries was to keep changing jobs was another example - one that ignored the reality of discrimination against minority groups such as women and older workers, and the harm done by trying to be re-employed.) 

Having got my annoyance with pseudo-experts out of the way, there are experts who do actually deserve that title, and Alan Kohler is one such. 

He has been criticising this policy approach for some time now, and this article includes a good and useful history of this thought bubble - which is what it is. 

There are a couple of quandaries to consider from a governance point of view on this debacle: 

• how do people take a thought bubble and transform into the steel tracks Mr Kohler mentions?
  Do they want promotion? Are they seeking to curry favour with a plausible and emotionally attractive notion? What has gone wrong intellectually with those individuals and systematically with the departments and organisations that no-one noticed that they were turning a thought bubble into rigid dogmatic ideology? (Mao would be pleased.) 
• how do people ignore the subsequent evidence of suffering?
  I have written about this problem in a few places, including at: 
• Emotional, psychological, social, intellectual, legal, and MORAL blindness to cruelty (~1,800 words - 8 - 11 min. read); 
• What is WRONG with people - especially US police? [CW: Tyre Nichols and police violence];
  

The extent of suffering from the error about managing inflation is less severe than those of the fatal RoboDebt scandal, but I suspect the lessons are similar to that - and to our official policy of degrading and abusing refugees. 

I've touched on some of the personal flaws that allow such depredations in the following: 

• RoboDebt [Content Warning: human rights abuses, abuses of power, anger, and the need to make moral choices and not be amathiac];
  
• Emotional competence and incompetence, work, and life; 
• The enabling and consequences of hate and amathia - including fascism and even more extreme right wing extremism [Content Warning - anger at violent bigotry]; 
• It is IMPOSSIBLE to be professional while one has unconscious bias.
  

As Voltaire put it, back in the 1700s: 

Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.

“‘It’s like they’re impervious’: fury at let off for Queensland police staff in racist recordings”   https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/sep/12/its-like-theyre-impervious-fury-at-let-off-for-queensland-police-staff-in-racist-recordings   

“Exclusive: Lack of punishment follows repeated promises by police commissioner Katarina Carroll to crack down on racism and misogyny within service”

The number of human rights problems that have come to light in Queensland of late suggest two immediate things to me: 

1. The Palaszczuk government is in trouble, and is scraping the bottom of the barrel for votes from backward, reactionary bigots (aka “conservatives”) - an they do have evident power, given who they elect to the National Parliament;
2. Queensland remains in the grip of those backward, reactionary bigots - who are a key part of why I moved away from that state in the 1980s. This is damaging the ALP everywhere else, except possibly Western Sydney, which seems to share the bigotry.
   

It is the pandering that is the problem here: good leadership would say “OK, we have a problem with people’s attitudes here, so we’ll start educating people and change their thinking - just as we have done with seat belts, littering, drink-driving, and so on”. 

The problem with that, of course, is that it requires (a) courage (such as that shown by the Andrews government in Victoria many times), and (b) time - which, in turn, depends on a modicum of foresight ... or, at the very least, thinking ahead ... 

PS - there is another example of the problems with Qld police at   https://nit.com.au/11-09-2023/7627/choke-him-out-cop-yells-before-indigenous-man-dies   and see also https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/sep/12/queensland-police-racist-recordings-punishment-government  

“Shocking levels of poverty as experts call for bigger JobSeeker rise”   https://thenewdaily.com.au/finance/finance-news/2023/09/12/costs-more-to-be-poor-australians-suffering-in-poverty-as-albanese-faces-jobseeker-pressure/  

The roots of this problem also lie in faulty “thinking” - specifically, victim-blaming of people in other socio-economic classes, including othering. 

There may also be the sort of economic intellectual mis-firing I discussed under the first article in this post ... 

The reality is: the evidence is clear, and it is flawed governance and nasty, bad faith othering - of the neighbourhood gossip variety - in voters that is causing the continuation of suffering.

“Your car may be scraping and selling your data, and there isn’t much you can do to stop it”   https://thenewdaily.com.au/finance/consumer/2023/09/10/car-data-scraping/  

My opinion has been, for many years now, that we need something like the European  GDPR. 

Equally, my opinion has been that the laziness, incompetence (aka, being comfortable with taking a gamble by ignoring a problem or pretending it will go away if ignored), and the actively defended cash cows of too many businesses has stopped us getting such legislative protection. 

Businesses who experience a major data breach experience a major loss of their standing in the eyes of the public, and that will eventually harm their bottom line. 

Fines will exacerbate the harm to their bottom line, but the attitudinal problems need to also be brought to light and remedied - just as the blasé attitudes towards safety have been mostly replaced with a willing embrace of the more responsible and inherently sound & decent attitude of “safety first”, and much as conscious and unconscious bias is slowly, grudgingly yielding to a combination of legislative and social pressure to found business on principles of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). 

Not changing is bad governance/management; resisting such change goes beyond being “just” bad governance/management to bad faith and malice, in my opinion. 

“Chinese academic raided by Australian police and offered $2,000 for information during trip”   https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/sep/10/chinese-academic-raided-asio-afp   

The heavy-handedness of this makes it almost Keystone  Cops-esque. The utter incompetence of this farcical debacle endangers government policy, and puts those responsible for it at risk of being accused of deliberate interference with governance. 

From a governance perspective, why did whoever approved of it lack even an ounce of perspective - the “rarest of senses ... common”, as some term it? 

Again, a genuine examination of that question, rather than dismissing it as trite or cynical, raises the possibility of changing things for the better. 

“To advance development, States must reject authoritarianism and protect civic space and fundamental rights, UN rights chief Volker Türk told the Human Rights Council”   https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/09/1140557  

This is a call for, among other things (such as human rights, decency, etc), good governance in government.

“Matt Bruce poured his life savings into a tiny home. Now Byron Shire council wants to demolish it”   https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/sep/10/matt-bruce-poured-his-life-savings-into-a-tiny-home-now-byron-bay-council-wants-to-demolish-it   

What is needed to change things for the better on this aspect of housing policy is something I have written about before - and some of it is a lack of technical knowledge, and some of it is wanting to shut people out of housing (aka, preserve housing value even if it denies others their enforceable [under article 11.1 of the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights]  right to adequate housing). See, for example: 

• A tiny update on tiny homes; 
• Tiny homes: a possible opportunity;
  

On the other hand, the “breakthrough” agreement that will allow a much-needed housing policy to proceed is an example of good governance - see https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/politics/australian-politics/2023/09/11/labor-greens-10b-housing-fund/. 

Along a similar line, a suggestion to split a bill is an example of attempts to find a way forward - see https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/sep/12/coalition-and-employers-back-david-pocock-over-splitting-contentious-industrial-relations-bill.

And on other good examples ...

“Is standing at your desk actually better than sitting? Here’s what the evidence says”  https://theconversation.com/is-standing-at-your-desk-actually-better-than-sitting-heres-what-the-evidence-says-212618   

The process this article follows is actually a good example of sound collation & assessment of evidence, and determination of what to do in response. 

“California passes anti-book ban bill for schools: ‘The true freedom state’”   https://www.thepinknews.com/2023/09/09/california-book-bans-lgbtq-race-inclusive-schools/  

While some states are banning books left and right, California is set to enact a law that would penalise schools that ban any book reflecting the state’s diversity, including those that explore LGBTQ+ identities and race. This is good, inclusive governance that gives that state a better chance of a good future.

 

Assumptions / basis 

In writing this, I have assumed / started from the following: 

• this blog states quite clearly that it is about political and human rights matters, including lived experience of problems, and thus I will assume readers are reasonable people who have noted the content warning in the post header;

Possible flaws 

Where I can, I will try to highlight possible flaws / issues you should consider:

• there may be flawed logical arguments in the above: to find out more about such flaws and thinking generally, I recommend Brendan  Myers’ free online course “Clear and Present Thinking”; 
  
• I could be wrong - so keep your thinking caps on, and make up your own minds for yourself.
  

 

If they are of any use of interest, the activism information links from my former news posts are available in this post. 

 

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Finally, remember: we need to be more human being rather than human doing.